CVC Succcess Group coaches Jerry & Sheryl Isenhour
Join us on The Chimney & Fireplace Success Network today as we talk about those overwhelming feelings of stress and anxiety that often halt and even cripple us as we envision where we need to be in business and in life. We will share different processes that have worked for us to move past those overwhelmed feelings we all get from time to time.
The Chimney and Fireplace Success Network is a weekly podcast brought to you by the CVC Success Group and hosted by industry expert, Jerry Isenhour. Each week you will find new presentations to assist business owners and managers in turning their business dreams into their business realities.
Video Transcript
Jerry Isenhour.: Well, good afternoon. We do appreciate you joining us here today on our live broadcast of The Chimney And Fireplace Success Network. Where we offer to you every single broadcast tips and tactics that will help you in your business, and in your personal life, or even both.
And today we’ve got a really good subject matter we’re going to be discussing; maybe it will give you some insights. Both Sheryl and I will be drawing on her Ziglar training and my Maxwell training as we went through our certification training and the coaching industry. So stick around with us, we’ll be right back with you, and we will start the show again. And again, we appreciate you being with us.
Jerry I.: The word for the day is something that so many people go through, which is the word overwhelmed. Overwhelming, overwhelmed, do you ever get overwhelmed?
Because Sheryl, I would say that’s part of what we deal with in our coaching practices is people that are overwhelmed with the challenges they’re faced every single day. What are your thoughts on the word overwhelmed?
Sheryl Isenhour: Well, I think everyone gets overwhelmed at times. I mean, it’s just the way that you deal with it. Some people get overwhelmed, and they go zoned out. Other people can get overwhelmed, take a couple breaths and catch it back up. But it’s just trying to put too many pieces into the same puzzle at the same time.
The human mind can only take so much.
Jerry I.: Yes. I honestly believe that one of the problems is the human mind can only take so much challenge at one time. I think as things start going bad, as we start having problems, it just gets overwhelming.
In fact, I even phrase it sometimes that an individual can actually go berserk from being overwhelmed; it’s like the frustrations just spillover. And they take it out on their loved ones and take it down their spouses, their kids, their parents in all kinds of different ways.
So what we want to do today is share with you some processes for when you feel overwhelmed. And in today’s world of blue-collar home services contractors, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed. It is interesting; we have had a lot of work done on our house lately.
Sheryl: A lot.
Why don’t you letter your vans?
Jerry I.: And I have had two different contractors or subcontractors that worked here and did services during this, and they showed up with unlettered vans, unlettered vans. I just asked the question, why don’t you letter your van?
And another one I told him I said, you know I’m going to try to give you a review, and I can’t find anywhere on the internet to give you a Google review. And both of them kind of fired back at me and said, you know, I got so much work right now I’m overwhelmed; I hope nobody can find me and call me. That’s pretty hard to imagine in businesses.
The secret is to hire more people.
Sheryl: I mean the secret to that is hire more people, take on more work. Make the world a better place. If you shut down just because you have got too much work, then what happens when like the pandemic or something like that happens and you have no work.
Jerry I.: Right. But what overwhelms them is that fear of failure; there are so many people that think that if I hire someone, and I see this. It may be a generational things, and you know them millennial are just not worth a hoot.
But other people find that they do a really great job for them. And whenever I see that, I got to wonder, what was the onboarding process, what did you do? So, Sheryl, do you ever feel overwhelmed?
Sheryl: I know this sounds silly, but you know me, you know what I do first thing in the morning. I get up, get a cup of coffee, and me and the puppy sit down and have a few 30 minutes or so, without a lot of lights on.
And that’s when my mind, it takes over the day, and I’m working on everything in the day. For a moment or two, and then a lot of times, I can feel myself tense and up because it’s like, oh, how am I going to get all this done today? How am I going to do it?
And then I kind of get over it because maybe it’s my age. I’ve got old enough to realize I can’t do everything; I just have to prioritize. And take the things that matter that will make a difference in someone else’s life or mine if I don’t get them done.
You have many different roles in your job.
Jerry I.: Right. But when we look at it, you’re a person that has so many different roles in jobs and things that you do. You own a manufacturing company; you’re involved in every facet of that manufacturing company.
You run a hiring service through CVC, and you hire people and interview people every day. And one of the things you go through, do you get ghosted when you are doing interviews?
Sheryl: I do, but I probably do a little different than some other people do when they get ghosted. I’m sitting here at home, and that pees me off more than stresses me out. Because they missed an opportunity.
And the thing about it is you saw what I added in my office yesterday, was another monitor. So, I have got windows open for the bookkeeping, the coaching, my office at IBD. I’ve got all of them open. And at any given moment, if I’ve got an extra 10 or 15 minutes, I can jump off to something else.
Some people can’t do that, I can’t say I do it the best, but I have no choice. I can’t not do it.
A classic case of someone who can multi-task
Jerry I.: So, you are a classic case of someone that can multitask; in other words, you could probably do two to three things at one time without getting overwhelmed. Would that be true?
Sheryl: Yes. When something stops me, let me back up. When you get stopped, sometimes you have to revamp and think about it to get back started back. I guess I’m lucky or either weird; I’m not sure what it is. But I can usually pick up and go right back to it 30 minutes later.
Jerry I.: And sometimes you just got to have that place to get away and clear your minds. In fact, that’s the reason I chose the background that we’ve got behind us right now. Which shows, you would think we are sitting on the deck, looking out at the waterfront, wouldn’t you?
Sheryl: Would love to be.
Jerry I.: Would love to be. And that’s sometimes where you got to put your mind to. Like said, we each have different paths in the morning. When we get up out of bed, you have got one path, and I have got another one, that we start going on our individual pass right off the bat every single morning.
I put my thoughts together for the day.
I take a cup of coffee, and I go to Jerry’s world, which is another part of the house, which is where that is where my world is. Where my campus is, that is where my office is, that is where my library is, and I start doing my things, and I put my thoughts together for the day.
Sheryl: And you automatically go to emails and the internet. I give myself a 30-minute window; that is the biggest difference I think in you and me as far as where our thoughts go to.
Jerry I.: Right. But at the same time, that is what fits my personality.
Sheryl: Fits you.
Jerry I.: Right. Sitting there with two dogs on my lap in the morning on the couch, with two puppies that are just kind of hanging out there; that’s not my ball game. That is your ball game, and that is the way that you start your day.
Sheryl: That’s the way I cleared out.
Jerry I.: Okay. But things come up through the day; we got problems; we will say it is your manufacturing plant. All of a sudden, you’ve got a dissatisfied dealer. Or perhaps, the freight company let you down, or you’ve got freight damage, and it’s just coming from all different angles. What do you say at that point?
You fix it.
Sheryl: You fix it. I mean, you can’t control what you can’t control. So what you do is back up, and you make the best effort you can in the right direction. I don’t dodge problems; I like to hit them face on because if you dodge them, they just get worse.
I watch people that won’t answer the phone because they wanted, in fact, our contractor did that, one of the contractors. Wouldn’t answer his phone because he knew there was a problem on the other end. To me, it’s easier to face it; if I face it, then it lasts a short time.
If you sit there and think about it, it takes up hours of your day. So you just hit things head-on. And yes, if you’ve got a lot of problems, you take the first one first, the one that’s going to hurt the most. Get it fixed and move on to the next.
You set your priorities where you do not get overwhelmed.
Jerry I.: Okay. So how do you set your priorities to where you don’t get overwhelmed? How do you decide what is the most important thing that I have to accomplish right now?
Sheryl: The one thing I start with, like we have talked about the one thing. The one thing that would make the most difference and fix the most things is what I go after first. And try to work my way down. Because the thing is, if you keep just digging through your list that you’ve made in your mental mind or on a piece of paper, you can just build more and more problems.
So if it’s an emergency, number one, we jump on it. I’m going to back up to when you have your heart attack; everything dropped. We took care of you. Then when I got you taken care of, and you were in the hospital, I started picking up the pieces, the most important to put back in place.
And yes, I got home to a cluster of stuff, but you take them in sequence. You do not Ping-Pong from one to the other; you select the most, what you consider to be the most important to fix the problem.
Jerry I.: Okay. Well, there are two types of personalities, and one of them is what I am going to call the firefighter, and the other one is the fire prevention specialist. So of those two personalities, which one do you think you are?
Are you more of a fire prevention person? Are you more of a firefighter when it comes to these overwhelming problems that can just take us out?
Sheryl: I think I class myself more under the fire prevention. So I don’t get into deep trouble. There are just some things you cannot foresee.
Jerry I.: Right. Good afternoon, Lynn, appreciate you joining us today. I hope you’re having a wonderful day out there in the real world. So yes, what we’re talking about here is the problems in being a firefighter. I think sometimes that we have panic, and we get overwhelmed because panic goes in.
I even think that some people go through what we call depression from being overwhelmed; it puts them in depression. Do you know people that go into depression because of the problems they face?
Sheryl: I honestly wish I didn’t, but yes, I do. Because they just get one problem stacks on another, and it sucks on another, and they let it start eating at them. And then they just shut down; there’s a point where people just shut down.
Is your personality more of a firefighter?
Jerry I.: Yes, that is it. So that’s a lot of it goes in. Is your personality more of a firefighter? And when I say that if you were rushing to a firewood, will you be the person that wants to be the first off that fire truck, that carries that hose, and wants to be the first person who is putting water on that fire?
And then it’s going to depend on your personality, let me ask you this. Will their DISC have anything to do with this, Sheryl?
Will their DISC have anything to do with this?
Sheryl: Yes. We all go through everything, needless to say. But yes different, the way their discs are written out a lot of times will show whether they’re going to be someone that can get overwhelmed real easy. It’s not always; sometimes it just gets into us a lot of its hormones and females and just conditions.
I mean, I think a lot of times, if people would just sit back and think, that’s where I call it a fire preventer. You try to keep your eye on it, yes. If there’s a fire, I’m going to be there, and I’m going to take care of it. But anything I could prevent, okay if you got fire one, let us see if we can keep fire two from turning into a big blaze.
Jerry I.: Okay. What about it is a person with what we call a D personality? You and I both have D behavior personalities. Is that a person that’s easier to fight the fires? Or are there other personalities that will make them a better firefighter or better fire prevention specialist?
Sheryl: I think a lot of times, the higher D’s will, they will go at it faster. They’ll jump on it; they’ll take care. For me being a high D, I’m going to take care of it kind of person, okay.
Take care of the important stuff, and my problem is I am not real high on the S and C which means I am not a big picture person. So a lot of the little stuff, if I’m going to let things fall through the crack, it’s going to be the little stuff. So yes, I go for the major.
Jerry I.: Right. And I fly a lot, and I fly American airlines. And one thing I know is American airlines is not going to hold an airplane for me. If that airplane’s scheduled to go, and it’s at the gate, it’s going to take off.
So I’m a person that gets to airports plenty of time to go through TSA, to go to those kind of things. At the same time, if there were an accident that happened in front of me that bogged the road down, all of a sudden, I’m going to start going through stress because this is something I cannot control.
This is something, and then I think, well, if you had your GPS on, you could have known that there was something ahead of you.
Sheryl: You’d have been a preventer.
Jerry I.: If you would have been more of a preventer. But plowing headfirst, I am headed for the airport, I have got everything packed, I am ready to go. But sometimes, it’s like I’ve actually got away from the house, and I’ve called you and said hey, you’re going to hear me come back in because I forgot something, I got to pick it up and take it with me.
I can even remember one time I was at Charlotte airport; I was going to do a seminar. And I’d left my cordless mouse, well if you’re a presenter that cordless mouse is really important, so you can walk away from the computer and advance your slides forward. So I remember calling you one time, and you told you where my cordless mouse was, and you brought it and gave it to me at the airport.
This is where you change your day.
Sheryl: And this is where you change your day. Did I have time right that moment to do that? No. But it was very important because, like you said, the plane was going to leave. So that became my priority. Did it freak me out? No, it had to be done.
Jerry I.: Yes. Good afternoon Mr. Coachman; I’m glad you could join us today on our broadcast today. So what we’re talking about here is overwhelming. And does overwhelming cause a lot of people to go through anxiety issues, Sheryl?
People get overwhelmed and their minds start to run.
Sheryl: It does. I think that is one of the top reasons I’m not medical, so please don’t take that in that direction. But people just get so overwhelmed, and their mind runs so, their heart starts, and yes, the anxiety kicks in.
And again, we go back to the same word; they shut down. They freak out; they get emotional. I don’t think I’ve ever had what somebody would call an anxiety attack. So I can’t speak 100% on that.
The anxiety kicks in
Jerry I.: Yes. So we’ve talked about being overwhelmed; we’ve talked about anxiety. But what we really need to do is share some processes with the people that are watching and listening to this on the replay; what is the ways that someone can get their minds in to deal with the pressures of life, the things that are going to happen.
Because this is a real-world, and things are going to go wrong just about every single day in your life, that’s part of life. So how would you say that person to be able to prepare to handle these pressures that go on?
Sheryl: One of the things I have always been taught was to kind of get your day in priorities to start with. And then leave yourself some intermittent times in there to change up. Because we all plan our day too tight, we do.
I remember used to; you thought you had eight hours to work and then ten and then 12 and then 24. So I just try not to feel mine too full if I can help it, and leave time. Because then that leaves me time to do the bottom of that list that I hate to do the worst.
But I think just stopping for a few minutes and taking a breath every now and then. Helps more than anything else.
The champagne pops due to the pressure that is built up.
Jerry I.: Right. And I think you got to let it out because I’m going to compare to a bottle of champagne. And if you’ve ever had a bottle of champagne, you know what happens is the champagne builds up pressure inside the bottle, right?
And when you finally get it off, it goes pop, and that cork can go flying through the air. Well, this is similar to what I see with clients when they’ve got to talk it out. One day this week, I actually had a client that called me, Sheryl, and we were on the phone for two hours solid. I was coming back from Pennsylvania, and my phone rang, and he said, are you available? Yes, I answered the phone.
And good, I need to talk. And he talked for almost two solid hours. Now, as he was able to talk this out, he all of a sudden started coming up with his answers. It wasn’t that I was giving him the answers, but rather as he left this pressure off, it made him be able to be free-thinking and come up with solutions to the problem that he was dealing with, which was very severe.
It was like almost a person at the edge of the cliff was what I was talking to. But finally, by going through this and just being able to say what was on his mind. And I think that is what happens a lot in life when we get overwhelmed, and it could be with our partner, it could be with an employee, it could be with a supervisor.
Sheryl: Hey, I have a time that I will share, and it worked with your parents. We were raising parents, and his mom was having a really bad day; Jerry was having a bad day, everybody was having a bad day. And for some reason, Sheryl was the target.
I remember because I don’t get angry at people if I can help it, and I don’t scream. I literally went out here in the backyard behind the fence and screamed at the top of my voice. Like you say, the cork. Went back in, things moved on.
Jerry I.: Right. Because a lot of times, what happens when we get overwhelmed, whenever it’s overpowering, whenever the anxiety hits. Have you ever noticed how people take it out on the ones that they love the most?
I went outside and screamed.
Sheryl: And that was the reason I went outside and screamed, is because I knew if I did not do something to release it, I would have hated myself forever because I may have said something to your mother or even to you.
And yes, I think you take it out on the ones you love because you know they’ll come back. That way, you do not make an enemy; you just mess them up for the day.
Jerry I.: Jesse, you do not know how much we appreciate your comment right there; we really thank you for your words there. Because this is why we do this, Jesse, we want to share thought processes and ways for people to get to where they want to go in life.
And like I said, we see so many people that are blocked by the fears, the anxieties, and the other things. And like I said, it’s just like that champagne bottle I was talking about; you’re putting pressure into that. If you actually look at an internal combustion engine, a gasoline engine in a car.
That’s what the gasoline engine does. The fuel is sucked in, and then it’s compressed, and then the spark plug fires, and we have an explosion which is massive amounts of energy, which then pushes that piston to make its next revolution.
Now in the internal combustion engine, that’s a design, that’s the way it’s engineered to work to produce electricity. But what you got to remember is, in the real world, many times, these anxieties, these pressures are simply more than we as human beings actually can handle. And this is why having close friends, having mentors.
People that you can share anything with, and share it with them honestly, and get others, because like I said, once you start talking things out, once you start unleashing your words. What’s going to happen here is unleashing your words and getting it out of your head, is just like knocking down a wall that you can’t get past.
Or maybe it’s even blocking your view. But again, whenever you’re under heavy pressure, whenever you’re under the anxieties, whenever you’re overwhelmed, it makes it difficult. When you’re a person that wants to be on time to everything. If you are running late, the anxiety comes up, right?
Sheryl: Yes. That is one time when I take a breath, because to me, if you are 10 minutes early, you are five minutes late.
Jerry I.: Correct. And today, it’s like this evening; we have dinner reservations at a restaurant we’ve been trying to go to. And since restaurants do not seat this many people, you made that reservation earlier this week.
Sheryl: Last Saturday.
Jerry I.: Okay. So she made the reservation over a week ago for dinner tonight. It’s one of the changes that goes on. But a lot of times, it’s like just finding a restaurant that we can go into to have a seat because one thing that puts both of us into an anxiety and a stress level is waiting in line at a restaurant. Would you agree?
Sheryl: I do not wait in line, you know that.
Jerry I.: Right, you don’t wait in lines. I mean, it’s like walking into an airport, and you want a cup of coffee. And it’s really amazing how many people are willing to stand in line at a Starbucks when right across the terminal is Joe’s coffee.
But Starbucks, and sometimes I even wonder, just what is Starbucks putting in their coffee that has drawn such an interest. But at the same time, I’m not really going to go there because actually, I bought some of those curry cubs the other day out from the grocery store, and what did I get? Starbucks, okay. And why? Because I have a lot of visitors here.
And I felt that the brand of coffee in the Kouric that would meet the most people’s interest would be the Starbucks brand. Again, because we want to lower anxieties. See, one of the things that we do here at CVC success group is we’re actually broadcasting to you from what we call our campus. And in our campus, we have, my office is in the campus.
We have a recording studio that you and I are sitting in right now, which is our broadcast studio. Right in front of us, that is our teaching studio that we do our live streams. But in the last couple weeks, we added another room here.
We call it the CVC Dreaming Room
And what do we call that? We call it the CVC dreaming room. And it’s all about getting people to take the thoughts out of their heads and the pressure of business. See what people do is they visit, and they spend a day with us, in fact, we had a client last week, didn’t we?
Sheryl: We did.
Jerry I.: And we spent an entire day, and we basically dealt with two subjects. And we dealt with this with mind mapping, making notes and what we were able to do was get the pressures out of him, the anxieties, the things that were holding him back in hiring.
And we left here, and he told us that morning, he wanted to be on the road home by 3 p.m. in the afternoon. And we accomplished that goal through using the tools, coming in, sitting in a room where it is very relaxed, it is not an office setting.
A lot of people have been said this looks like a psychiatrist’s office when you come in here because it has got the couch over there, you can sit there, you can relax. You can sit in an overstuffed chair. We got TV monitors; we got flip charts; we got all that.
But it’s all about the dreaming and the dreaming in our dreaming room that we’ve set up for our client base to visit us here at the CVC campus that we would welcome anyone else that would be interested in spending a day with us, to actually come here.
Where we can help them get these dreams out, and we can help them by going through the anxieties, the problems, the pressures what are they feeling and it’s amazing once you get people out of their office environment, how much progress we can make with them from them talking out what their problems are.
And the thing is, when their people come here, it’s like being able to get two distinctly different points of view. Because folks, let me tell you something, she and I do not always agree.
Sheryl: Really.
Group Coaching will relax anxieties and build processes.
Jerry I.: And it is the same thing we see with our new group coaching program that we put together. What we’ve done here with our group coaching, this is another way that we feel we’ll relax anxieties and build processes.
Because in the CVC group coaching environment, what we have is we have three coaches that are in this as facilitators. Now, what’s that going to bring you? Well, that’s myself, that Sheryl, that’s Brandy Biswell. And folks let me tell you something, that is going to be three different points of view, would you agree?
Sheryl: Yes. But the whole deal about it is you we want these people to take away what works for them, and what would work for Jane might not work for Jack. So out of the three, I think we will hit on it.
Jerry I.: We will. So, these are different processes because what we know from the training, we have had with Ziglar and with Maxwell, we know that there are certain processes, certain ways to talk, certain ways to get people’s thoughts out.
People bottle up their anxieties.
But often, so often, people bottle up their anxieties. And when they bottle it up, what happens is there’s an explosion. Just like that champagne, the bottle is open, and there goes the cork flying across the room, pop. And you know the bad thing is you got to be careful that cork, it could put your eye out.
Sheryl: Right. Look at it this way, when the pressure’s over, the champagne is good.
Jerry I.: That’s it.
Sheryl: Other words, your mind’s good again.
Jerry I.: If you bought good champagne.
Sheryl: Well, I have had crappy champagne.
Jerry I.: There you go. Because again, when you look at it, so many people are so fearful to make the changes to their lives, to their businesses, that deep down inside, they know they need to. Or they’re letting other people affect them in the process of their business.
They may be hearing people say you got to scale; you got to scale, you got to grow the business bigger. But the problem is, if it doesn’t fit that business owner’s requirements of why they started the business, the scaling may not be the right answer.
And it can put people under a tremendous strain. And that’s what I also see on Facebook discussions because there’s a lot of Facebook discussions groups. And people, many times, they’ll ask for input from so many different people.
But let me share something with you, a Facebook discussion group probably is not the best place to get your legal advice, to get your accounting advice, and other things. This is a vast country, and there are so many changes from one part of the country, from one geographic area to another, that you’ve got to learn to make your decisions.
But this is where your mentors in life, your coaches in life. And when we talk about a coach, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a coach you’ve contracted with because a lot of times, people will coach you through what you’re looking at and help you face those adversities.
It’s kind of like when you broke down on the road, and you don’t know how to use the jack, or you don’t know how to get the spare tire out from under the car. Or you are driving a rental car, and suddenly, there is no spare tire, and you are on the side of the Massachusetts turnpike, as I have said before.
Sheryl: Did we get anxious that day?
Jerry I.: We got anxious, but now it also comes to preparation. Because now I prepare for these kinds of things. Whenever I leave with a rental car, I’m going to run an air pressure check on the dash, and I’m also going to stop and get something cold to drink at the first convenience store.
And the reason is when you get stuck on the side of the road, and you aren’t got nothing to drink, it can get pretty deadly miserable. Let’s give you an example; some years ago, you and I were traveling to Hershey, Pennsylvania.
And what happened was we left on a Sunday morning, and we were headed up, and they were calling for snow. Now when they were calling for snow, we had no idea how bad this snowstorm is going to be.
Sheryl: We’re from the south.
Jerry I.: Right. I can remember stopping in a convenience store somewhere in Southern Virginia as we got on the interstate 81. And we were traveling north, and as we got north, the snow got heavier and heavier, and the snow got higher and higher on the side road, you remember those days?
Sheryl: Yes. Also, remember you did not get the chicken at that store you wanted to get.
Jerry I.: Yes. When I went in that convenience store, they had fried chicken there, and you could smell this fried chicken.
So what happened through the night was as we are through the afternoon and evening, because we got slower and slower until we finally stopped in the middle of the road, and we can’t move for like six to eight hours before the road was cleared, that we could keep going up the road.
And during the night, luckily, you had packed some food into there.
Sheryl: It was on one of my diet kicks; I had all kind of snacky stuff.
Jerry I.: We had energy bars, we had popcorn. We had something to drink, and the suburban that we had, believe it or not, had a television in it. But there was not a large selection of programming.
Sheryl: The only thing we found was how turtles propagate.
Jerry I.: Was it turtles, or was it frogs?
Sheryl: Turtles.
Jerry I.: Okay. So what we could find on this TV station, because this was before you had internet like we did today, which we could have been entertained on Facebook all night. But we didn’t have it, so we tuned in, and the only thing that we could find was the mating habits of those turtles.
Sheryl: I thought it was interesting.
Jerry I.: Right. So, we are sitting here on interstate 81, near the Virginia, West Virginia border state line, and the only thing we can do is.
Sheryl: Watch turtles.
Jerry I.: Is watch turtles and dream of fried chicken, remember that.
Sheryl: You were doing the dreaming.
Jerry I.: Yes, that night I was thinking. And I’m thinking how bad it is, okay. And I’m looking here, but then I look in this long line of traffic is going as far as you can see to the front, and as far as you can see to the back. But then I saw something that made me grateful that night. Do you remember what that was?
Sheryl: Yes, the three kids in the car in front of us.
Jerry I.: Yes. In front of us was a car with three small children.
Sheryl: A small car with three small children.
Jerry I.: It was not a conversion van; it was not a station wagon. It was a compact car, and I was thinking, what if I had all my little urchins at the time in that car with us or yours, or if all five of them have been there. Think about that, how much worse life could be?
Sheryl: Anxiety would have been at the time.
Jerry I.: Right. So from this point finally through the night and this is where resolutions always come true, all of a sudden the traffic started moving. Now moved a little bit slow at first, but then it picked up speed. So we were hungry, right? We were about to starve. I had enough popcorn; I had enough energy bars. I wanted real food, okay.
You ever been there? It was time for real food. So what did we do? We pulled off at an exit ramp, and there was a waffle house. Now, if you’re from the south, you know what a waffle house is.
And if you travel through the south, and what you got at waffle house is you got hash browns smothered and covered in all kinds of ways to get your hash browns, right?
Sheryl: Yes, if you can eat them.
Jerry I.: If you can eat them. But pulled into there, and what did I have? The most delicious T-bone steak I think I had ever had. That T-bone steak was a delicacy. But here was a whole thing; we were in desperate situation through the night.
Not knowing how long are we going to be out here and everything else, but it did work out. And that’s the funny thing about life. Every time you run into a problem, every time you’re overwhelmed. Have you always noticed that the solution comes true?
If you slow down enough to see it
Sheryl: If you slow down enough to see it.
Jerry I.: Yes. You got to slow down. But what you also will often notice is, the solution is better than the pain that you were presently in.
Sheryl: It is usually not the solution that you thought it would be.
Jerry I.: Yes. Now sometimes when you’re in anxiety, sometimes when you’re in this overwhelmed state, you’re going to have to go through some pain sometimes. You’re going to have to make some changes that you may consider painful.
So one of the thought processes is a POV that I preach, and I work from, which is change can be painful. But it’s up to you to determine if the pain you’re presently in is better than the pain of change; you make your decision to go forward.
You have got an incredibly unique point of view that we can share with them; what is your unique point of view?
Sheryl: I am glad I did, instead of wishing I had, and that can work with that also. I am glad I made the move to come out of the anxiety.
Jerry I.: Yes. So, let us take an example, whenever you have gone through tremendous turmoil in your life, have you noticed it is always worked out to the best whenever you come through this?
Sheryl: Yes. Because I don’t think you actually know what the outcome is going to be when you’re in that anxiety state, and then you sit there and you worry about it and you worry about it, and then all of a sudden when it comes to light, you didn’t know where it was going, to begin with, so it had to be better than where you came from.
Jerry I.: That’s it. But that’s what you got to do because we all get overwhelmed. I don’t care who you are; I don’t care what kind of, I don’t care how strong your personality is. But what you got to do is balance it out. You got to balance out what are the things you need to do. Just this morning, I was talking to a young man about a potential career change.
And it was something that, I said here’s what you need to do. Get a piece of paper, get out a piece of paper. And I want you to list your pros and cons and go through this. Last week you and I talked about mind mapping, and what did you call mind mapping? Do you remember?
Sheryl: Mind dumping.
They are just piling up in your brain getting heavier and heavier.
Jerry I.: You called it mind dumping. Because see what happens is, whenever you’ve got all these things, and they’re just piling up in your brain, heavier and heavier and heavier. It’s putting the pressure on. And when you put the pressure on, you can’t think, but you got to let this pressure off.
And one of the ways to let the pressure off is to communicate with other people. Find someone you trust, someone that you can open up to, someone that can understand you.
Sheryl: There’s another way Jerry. I mean other people are good too, it’s nice to have other people. But if you’ve got a problem, you can’t confide, journal. Sit down and write it, put it in print. And like I was talking, actually to Lynn on here yesterday. Once it’s on paper, it’s kind of out of your mind, and you can see it, and you can deal with it.
Now that doesn’t work in all circumstances; people by far better. But sometimes you must deal with certain things yourself because there is no one that would understand what you were going through at that time.
Jerry I.: Right. And that is one of the things we have used doing seminars, whenever we presented them to people in leadership and other things. One of the props that we use is we put a plastic bucket on each table in the seminar meeting room.
We call these suck buckets.
And what we do, we call these suck buckets, and what we tell people to do with the suck bucket is write down the things that you do not want to do in your business that you need to delegate to others. That you’re probably not that good at, that other people may be better.
Then write it down and throw it into the suck bucket. So a lot of times, that’s what you’ve got to do, to come up to the resolutions of your issues to your problems is simply write it down. So, writing it down helps you get it out of your system.
Sheryl: It does. And you have got it in front of you instead of in you.
Jerry I.: Right.
Sheryl: And I do not know if you ever went through this process or not. But in a group situation, everybody sat down and wrote the worst problem that they had. And then we did this in Ziglar.
And you wrote the worst thing that you could think of, the worst thing that you would put in your suck bucket, and then you read it, and then you balled it up, and you threw it in the trash can in the center of the room.
Jerry I.: There you go. So I can even remember several years ago, you and I were in a social setting. And we were with another couple. And the man said some things that really upset his wife. And she never said a word, but you could tell she was building up her anxiety.
A little bit later, I noticed that she was writing on a piece of paper, and I asked her what are you writing down? She said I’m writing down my frustrations. Because once I write them down, I can then deal with them, and it’s similar to talking.
So what you’re saying is by writing it down, it’s very similar to communicating with another human being. Am I getting that right?
Writing down your problems will help you erase the stress.
Sheryl: Yes. And another thing you can do, this is Sheryl’s method. If I get really upset at you, which that never happened.
Jerry I.: That never happened. Whoa, what is this crap? Okay, get really upset with me; I do not think so.
Sheryl: I will literally type; I prefer writing it. But a lot of times, I don’t have anything in front of me, and I will type the email that I want to say to you. And then I will sit there and read it, usually read it twice and think yes, that works, and then I delete it.
Jerry I.: Now, one of these days, what is going to happen? She’s going to hit send by mistake.
Sheryl: Oh, it will not be a mistake.
Jerry I.: Yes. And then see this is what will happen, she’ll send me that email about the time I’m boarding an airplane, okay. So now then I’ve got two and three hours maybe on a flight to wonder, okay, what am I going to get off this airport? So, see what that could be?
Sheryl: I would time it even if it were six hours before the air flight; if I were going to do that, I would wait. It is called keep the bullet in the chamber.
Jerry I.: There you go. So anyway, we hope we have shared some ideas with you today. Because being overwhelmed with life and the cards that life deals with you. Let me tell you something; every human being goes through this.
Every human being must be able to deal with the anxiety and stress.
Every human being must be able to deal with this, filter through it, and come up with a process to move through it. This may be whiteboarding; it might be mind dumping; it may be mind mapping. It may be as simple as writing an email, never sending it. It may be as simple as sitting down and talking to someone that you can really open up to and share your innermost fears, your anxiety, your panic modes, and everything.
But this is what I know. The human brain is a very complicated machine, and the human heart is also. And when you look at this, what can happen is if you can communicate, get these things out, bring it into the priority order of where you want it to go.
It’s like often as a coach, one of the things I do with new clients is I visit the establishment, spend a couple of days do a swap process, looking everything, taking all kinds of notes. And then, I type up an analysis and a strategy for their consideration how to move forward. And this is the most common answer I get, which is, well, we knew all those things.
We just didn’t know how to deal with them. So that’s right because it’s my job to work with you to develop a strategy for you to resolve these problems. So you can start living the dreams you had the day you started in the end of business and make them reality. So that is what we do here at CVC Success Group, we do this broadcast, we do this podcast.
And as a way to share things with people they give us the honor, the courtesy, the pleasure and everything else, so we’ll listen to me, and you talk once a week, would you agree with that?
Sheryl: I agree.
Jerry I.: Okay. So we want to appreciate you joining us today. Sheryl, is there anything you want to add to this before we close this show out today?
Sheryl: I want to add one thing that my grandfather used to say to me when I would complain to him a little bit. He’d look at me and say, little lady, learn to play with the cards you’re dealt.
Learn to play with the cards you are dealt.
Jerry I.: Okay. So anyway, we’ll see you next time on another episode, another broadcast of the chimney and fireplace success network. This is our way of sharing tips and tactics with you out there in the real world.
If you see value in this, hey, would you share this with other people? I’m sure there are others that if you’ve benefited, maybe they will benefit from this. Feel free to follow us on Facebook, on YouTube, on all the different outreaches that we do. This is Jerry Isenhour, and you are.
Sheryl: Sheryl Isenhour.
Jerry I.: And we look forward if we can assist you in getting to your business streams; reach out to us at info@CVCsuccessgroup.com, and we’d love to have a conversation with you. And see if our ideas, our principles, our processes may just be the processes that you’ve been looking for to move you closer and closer to those dreams you have in life.
Because that’s what it’s all about. Remember, we only spend so many days on this green earth that God gave us. So what you’ve got to do is be able to make the most of each and every one of these days, and don’t let the obstacles of life hold you back. See you next time on the next episode of the chimney and fireplace success network.